Building a Free Immigration Cost Calculator: Technical Decisions and Trade-offs

Immigration to the United States is expensive. Between USCIS filing fees, attorney costs, medical exams, and miscellaneous expenses, applicants often face bills ranging from $5,000 to over $30,000 depending on their visa category. Yet most people start the process with little understanding of the total cost. I recently worked on building a free cost estimation tool for EB-1A and NIW immigration applicants. This article covers the technical decisions, trade-offs, and lessons learned during the process. The Problem When I started researching immigration costs, I found that most information was scattered across forum posts, attorney websites with outdated fee schedules, and Reddit threads with conflicting numbers. USCIS publishes its filing fees, but the total cost involves many additional components that vary by situation. The goal was straightforward: build a calculator that gives applicants a realistic cost breakdown based on their specific circumstances, without requiring them to crea